Every for-profit or non-profit leader has a bottom line. It’s why you were hired. What is your bottom line?
Social change – shareholder value – product innovation – spiritual transformation
– profit...
Before you read on, name your organizations' bottom line
here:_________
I suggest you add a bottom-line measure to
your leadership: the personal development of the people you lead. In the
long run it isn’t about what you leave behind for
your organization ~ it’s about who
you leave behind.
Although our world places great value on leaders who
accomplish great things, it’s the leaders who ‘accomplish’ inspiration
in the lives of others who endure in our collective memories AND have left a legacy of change in thinking and behaviour that continues to serve the world.
Look at these pictures (or insert the image of a leader you admire) and describe for yourself the legacies of each leader:
- What was distinctive in their life?
- How did they inspire you?
- To what extent has their leadership endured beyond their organizational ‘bottom line’?
Now, here’s a counter-intuitive
point: the clearest path to influencing
the character and personal development of others is to pay attention to your
own growth! Developing others isn’t
so much about being an inspiring motivator, providing leadership coaches, or implementing
a team-development plan (as helpful as they are). It’s really based in YOU, in the “quality of
you” as their leader. You best lead
others by consciously leading yourself.
A leaders’ self-awareness is the basic
building block of effective leadership.
Leaders who lead themselves acknowledge that there are
typical stages and phases of development through which all people travel.
Throughout life we will cycle through these phases. At times they are painful and uncomfortable. Effective leaders don’t avoid these stages,
but rather normalize them as natural building blocks of their inner life and
character. It’s from that inner life that
they lead in the most profound ways ‘beyond the bottom line’.
Here’s my broad description of the phases of:
Questioning/Clearing/Crucible/Clarity
Questioning
At various points throughout life a sense of ‘dis-ease’
with our context settles over us. I have
often observed this in the lives of leaders when I hear them express: “Is this
all”? After a period of years in their
role, after the initial building phases of projects, visions or teams and after
the job has settled into some kind of pattern, a dis-ease with life and
leadership enters their thinking.
This does not mean something is wrong. It does mean something in you is stirring. Something is calling you to self-examination
and possibly to re-calibration of your place in life, in relationships, in leadership. This is a good and healthy place – so don’t
shake it off by ramping up your work life or hastily exiting your role.
It’s just good to sit in the place of
questioning for a while.
Clearing
Our life/heart/soul longs for something deeper to connect
with than the typical bottom-line of a leadership role. We are inherently connected to something more
than money, honour, status or achievement.
It’s a sense of destiny or legacy – the deep knowledge that we are on
this earth for a purpose and that when our role is done and our life is
finished, we have meant something to someone in this world. I believe it’s the God who created
you that put that stirring there. Whether you believe that or simply that
we as humans are meant to contribute something for the benefit of this world, we
find our greatest meaning & contribution outside of ourselves.
Yet through our lives we encounter things that get in the
way of living a legacy-producing life. The
fog of deadlines, demands & distractions enshroud our life and we are in
desperate need of emerging into a clearing.
That is why “The Questioning” is such a critical phase! It starts a process where you hear the deepest longing of your soul speak back to you.
“The Clearing” is a place (and a process) where you come face to face
with yourself. In this place the most
powerful thing you can do is to give a name(s) to the deficits you are
discerning:
-in your personal character
-around your unfulfilled
aspirations
-about what you lack to be a
‘legacy’ leader
I urge you to a ruthless honesty about yourself. It’s not only critical for you, but for the
world! WHY? Our for-profit and non profit leadership
positions need character-leaders who see beyond the hard facts of most
bottom-lines. They see impact on people,
on the environment, on communities, on culture, on well-being. This is ‘another way’ of leadership needed by
our world. This way of leadership isn’t acquired
through an MBA program. It comes through
honest reflection on the very nature of who you are as a leader.
Crucible
 |
| Chinese symbols for 'Crisis' |
Articulating your deficits and aspirations is one
thing. Owning them to the point of
making a choice to act is something else.
Crucible creates personal crisis. Here we come face to face with the
limitations of our current self and realize that without change, we will never
become who we aspire to be. The choice
is stark: remain in status quo, coast
for the rest of your life and surely wither on the vine, OR get off of your
chair and make some commitments to move your life forward.
Ambivalence at this stage is natural, because change is
hard. We become accustomed to our
current state of being and so will ask ourselves: “Do I really want to go
through the effort of becoming a different/better person”?
This push-pull between our knowledge of a need for change
and our disinterest in the energy required to change creates an internal
tempest. What you choose in that storm
of self-analysis forms your character development going forward.
Clarity
“Clarity” is defined as ‘the quality of being clearly expressed’. It comes only to those who act on (express) their
choice for change. Notice I said it comes
to those who act. Clarity is
profound when it first comes to your awareness.
But that’s not true clarity. It’s
just awareness. True clarity is when
your choice is ‘expressed’ not only in words, but action. You need commitment and discipline to act
until what you have chosen becomes a regular part of your life and/or thinking.
You have been there before. Remember those meetings when the team had ‘clarity’
on a direction? Everyone left the meeting
inspired & hopeful. But there was no
commitment to regular and sustained action.
The ‘clarity’ you thought you had died because of lack of expression
beyond the words.
It’s simple, but curiously get’s missed too often:
MAKE A PLAN + EXECUTE A PLAN = ACCOMPLISH REAL
CHANGE.
In summary:
...Let the questions come & sit with them for a while.
...When face to face with yourself, be honest about what
you are and what you aspire to yet become.
...As hard as it may be, own who you are, and the changes
you need to make.
...Express your aspirations by making a plan and
executing it.
There is a greater metric than the economic or social
‘bottom-line’. You run your business
or non-profit by it’s’ bottom line, but don’t run your life that way.
Your life will be judged.
What will it say to the world?
Harv Matchullis
If you or your team desire
support to turn your aspirations into action, contact me for an initial
discussion and sample session on how coaching can ensure you enact the change
you know you need
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